The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, February 8, 2013

Read the article in the original עבריתRead the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)

John Walker Lindh is a citizen of the United States who was born in Washington, D.C. in the year 1981. Lindh was not born a Muslim. He converted when he was 16 years old and then traveled to Yemen in order to learn Arabic. In 2000 he traveled to Afghanistan and underwent an educational and training course in al-Farouq, an al-Qaeda training camp. He made contact with the organization of Mujahadeen in Pakistan, and was caught in 2001 in Afghanistan serving as a jihadist with the Taliban. He was convicted of fighting for an illegal organization and sentenced to twenty years in the Terre Haute prison in the state of Indiana.

In prison, Lindh continued to preach to his fellow prisoners and exhort them to be persistent in their jihad against the United States and the jihad to enforce Muslim Shari'a law on all of humanity. As a result, the prison authorities limited his participation in public prayer to only one time per week, on Friday. He appealed to the court, demanding to be allowed to participate in public prayer five times a day. The judge of the federal court, Jane Magnus-Stinson, found - contrary to the opinion of the prison authorities - that despite the fact that Lindh does not recognize the legality of the American court or the authority of her honor the judge, he nevertheless has the right to pray in public and to meet with his comrades five times every day, even if it means that the prison must beef up its security arrangements in order to accommodate his wishes.
This is not an isolated case. The United States has been driven for the past several years by "political correctness", which censors any reference to a person's faith, even if this faith instigates him to wage holy war against the United States. According to this approach, if someone claims that the United States is the "little Satan", Americans must accept this characterization as correct and legitimate, and if the American is uncomfortable with this, he should do some soul searching to ascertain the reason that caused the Other - who is clearly miserable, hungry and neglected because of the crimes of the United States - to regard him as Satan.Political correctness is what dictates conduct in the highest echelons of leadership in the United States: most citizens of the country consider it to be unacceptable to say that President Obama comes from a Muslim family, and believe that it is not legitimate to refer to Obama's religion in any way. This is why the campaign against Obama that was based on this fact failed to prevent him from being re-elected.
The federal investigative bodies have also been seized by American political correctness; and two years ago, in keeping with instructions from above, training programs for the FBI agents and other investigative agencies were changed, so that today, an interrogator is forbidden to relate to the religion or beliefs of someone under investigation, even if his faith or beliefs actually incite him to murderous jihad against the state. Authorities of the state forbid the use of the expression "Islamic terror", and laundered expressions such as "ideological violence" must be used instead.
The slaughter that Major Nidal Malik Hasan perpetrated against his comrades at the Fort Hood base in Texas in order to prevent them from going to Afghanistan, is described by the authorities as "workplace violence". For the adherents of political correctness, the fact that Hasan was in contact with Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni-American terrorist who was subsequently eliminated, does not contradict the theory of political correctness that characterizes Islam as a religion of peace and love, hugs and kisses. "Islam" - so they believe - is based on the Arabic word "salam", which means "peace", because the superficiality that characterizes the American media discourages people from looking it up and discovering that the real meaning of the word "Islam" is "surrender" or "submission".
The writer of these lines, together with an American colleague, an attorney by the name of David Yerushalmi, published an article about two years ago, "Shari'a and Violence in Mosques of the United States". This article is based on analysis of data and material that was collected in approximately one hundred mosques across the United States. Included in this material are two interesting pamphlets, in clear English: one is "40 Hadiths on Jihad" (a hadith is part of the Islamic oral tradition that relates to the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad), and this booklet is a song of praise to jihad, to the jihadist and to his reward in the world to come. Jihad in this booklet is not against illness, poverty, neglect and corruption, and not even against the evil inclination, but against anyone who is not Muslim, and implicitly, every American who does not convert to Islam.
Another booklet that is distributed in mosques of the United States is entitled "What should you do if you are arrested or investigated by the racist, fascist and criminal police, or the racist, fascist FBI?". This guide book is written - according to what is printed on the title page - by Dr. al-Hajj Idris Muhammad, and is issued by the publishing house "al-Amin" in New York. In this booklet the writer instructs the reader in how to withstand interrogation relating to his religion and jihad against the "Great Satan", by exploiting the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. These rights are considered the most important rights in the United States, even if by exercising them, the United States is rendered less able to fight the enemies who conduct their jihad against it from within and from its prisons.
Problematic Islamic activity also exists within the institutions of higher learning in the United States. This writer has collected flyers in the mosques of one of the academic institutions, that instruct Muslim and Arab students how to manage charitable funds, how to stand up to law enforcement agencies, how to conduct oneself and how to identify and protect oneself from intelligence agents who infiltrate Islamic groups. All of this is, of course, legal, but smells quite bad.
Many mosques in the United States are built today in quiet and serene residential neighborhoods, despite the residents having officially expressed their objection to the building of these mosques. Obviously, in every quiet suburb where a mosque is built, the price of the houses goes down, since the commotion associated with the arrival of the worshipers disturbs the peace and quiet in these areas. Residents are compelled to appeal to the courts to prevent the mosques from sounding the call to prayer on loudspeakers in the early hours of the day because the non-Muslims do not want to wake up at five in the morning. The courts tend to reject these suits and allow the mosques to disturb the quiet of the early morning watch in the name of political correctness. Planning authorities are also influenced negatively by political correctness, allowing mosques to be built even if it will cause a significant devaluation in the prices of real estate and large losses to the owners of the houses, who originally bought their homes in a quiet place and at a high price.
The building of mosques gained momentum after the planning authorities of New York - who are guided by political correctness - allowed a mosque to be built near Ground Zero, the place where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, which were attacked by Islamic terror on the 11th of September 2001, used to stand. The fact is that no Muslims live in this area; nevertheless, even the objection of many individuals and groups failed to overcome the political correctness of the planning authorities.
In the United States today, there are approximately seven million Muslims, and their numbers are increasing quickly, owing to the fact that they have a higher birth rate than the low average American rate standing at 1.6 children per woman, and also because of immigration. The Muslims have established organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations - CAIR - whose main mission is to improve the image of Islam in American public opinion. The fact that the people who now head these organizations or headed them in the past are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamic movements does not put a damper on the desire of government leaders to cozy up to these organizations, because they are are driven by the obsession to endear themselves to Islam, and they consider these organizations to be the authentic representatives of the Muslims in the United States.
Many investment companies in the United States offer their clients investment plans that are consistent with Islamic Shari'a.
Islamic money, much of which comes from oil profits, is invested in academic institutions, and the conduct of an academic institution that receives significant donations from an Islamic source is influenced by these donations. About one year ago the University of Yale closed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) which was headed by a Jewish professor by the name of Charles (Asher) Small, immediately after this university received a large donation from a Saudi source. The Carter Center, the research center of former president Jimmy Carter, operates out of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, with Saudi money. Is there a connection between this fact and Carter's book: "Palestine - Peace, not Apartheid"?
The activity of Islamic institutions in the United States often focuses on Israel, and more than a few of these institutions hold yearly events called "Israeli Apartheid Week". Surprisingly, there are Jewish students and staff members, and even Israelis, who take part in this anti-Israeli activity, which are obviously driven by clear anti-semitic motives. MK Jamal Zahalka from the Israeli Arab National Democratic Assembly party is a star from this movement who is in great demand. The Jewish students are intimidated, and taking a pro-Israeli stance makes them a target for criticism and even violence by those who wish to portray Israel as an apartheid state. The Jewish students are also afraid to express pro-Israeli positions in class, because there are lecturers, and not only from Arab or Muslim countries, who might lower the grades of a student who dares to challenge the statement that Israel is an apartheid state.
The picture in the United States is disturbing: in my opinion the United States is treading in Europe's footsteps of 15 years ago: what one sees today in the United States we saw in Europe 15 years ago, and if America doesn't wake up it will find itself in another 15 years in the situation that Europe is in today.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with permission from the author.

Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.

Last week Kirsten Powers, one of the more visible Democratic contributors to Fox News, wrote a lengthy piece
for that organization’s website called “Obama vs. Fox News –behind the
White House strategy to delegitimize a news organization.” In it she
rather shockingly set herself apart from her more radical cohorts on the
left by demonstrating a willingness to denounce them for their
demonization of Fox and their assault on freedom of the press. She may
be one of the last pundits on the left to adhere, at least in this
instance, to classical liberal values.

“There is no war on terror for the Obama White House,” her op-ed
began, “but there is one on Fox News.” She was referring to a recent
interview with The New Republic in which President Obama
complained yet again about, as she put it, “the one television news
outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor… the
media meanies at Fox News.” Unaccustomed to being held accountable by an
adoring mainstream media, Obama has never even bothered to hide his
frustration and irritation with Fox. In fact, the White House is
brazenly open about its campaign to, as Powers wrote, “silence any
dissent they detect in the press corps.”

Powers recounts some of the more recent instances of that campaign.
For example, the White House excluded Fox News from conference calls
dealing with the Benghazi debacle, “despite Fox News being the only
outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top
notch foreign policy reporters.” Actually, Fox was frozen out not so
much despite its top notch focus on Benghazi as because
of it, since Obama and Hilary Clinton would like to bury the
controversy. The fact that Powers openly acknowledged Fox’s
investigative quality rather than simply accusing the network of
harassing the President over an issue that “doesn’t make a difference,”
to paraphrase Clinton, is unheard of from the left.

Powers mentions other examples of the Obama administration’s antagonism toward Fox. His people left Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday
out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS for
not being part of a “legitimate” news network. In late 2009, senior
adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s This Week that Fox News is “not really a news station.” About that same time, then-White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said to the New York Times,
“let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.” This echoes
Media Matters’ signature line about Fox in a 2010 memo to donors: “Fox
News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP,
and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media,
elected officials and the public.” Their CEO David Brock, Powers notes,
has claimed that their strategy was a “war on Fox.”

“Can someone explain to me,” Powers wrote, “how it’s ‘liberal’ to try
and shut down a media organization? What the Obama administration is
doing, and what liberals are funding at [Media Matters] is beyond
chilling – it’s a deep freeze.” She’s right – it’s not “liberal” at all,
and neither is the contemporary totalitarian left. She goes on to
excoriate Media Matters further for its threats to collect dirt on Fox
News employees and to sue conservatives for “slanderous” comments about
progressives. “If the White House can call one news outlet illegitimate
for asking tough questions, then guess who is next? Anyone”:

It is clear now that the idea of freedom of the press
actually offends Media Matters… They say they are “consider[ing] pushing
prominent progressives to stop appearing on Fox News.” For those who
defy the order, they threaten to start daily publishing the names of
Democrats who appear in order to shame them. If that doesn’t work,
presumably they will just shave our heads and march us down Constitution
Avenue.

Don’t tempt them, Ms. Powers. They’re champing at the bit to do just
that sort of thing to traitors like you who dare challenge their
monolithic front. And kudos to you for calling them on it – although
confining her criticism to Media Matters is way too limiting,
considering that progressives in general find free speech and freedom of
the press to be impediments to their lust for power.

One stretch in particular of Kirsten Powers’ op-ed is worth quoting
at length, because it exhibits a rather courageous degree of
self-criticism:

Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian,
moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when
leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to
delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.In fact, if you are a liberal – as I am – you should be the most
offended, as liberalism is founded on the idea of cherishing dissent and
an inviolable right to freedom of expression.

That more liberals aren’t calling out the White House for this
outrageous behavior tells you something about the state of liberalism in
America today.

Indeed it does. If only Powers would pursue this line of thinking to
its logical end – that the “liberalism” she is describing is actually
the domain of conservatives. The leftists she’s addressing here no
longer have a truly liberal bone in their collective body. They are
totalitarians, and it is today’s conservatives who are the guardians of classically liberal principles.

“We defend freedom of the press because of the principle, not because
we like everything the press does,” Powers adds. “For example, I defend
MSNBC’s right to run liberal programming to their hearts content. The
media should be held accountable, including Fox News.” So it should –
and so conservatives have been insisting through years of the media’s
nauseating idolatry of Obama.

Kirsten Powers remains a Democrat, no doubt about it. There are still
many issues on which she and conservatives would disagree. But at least
on this point, her vigorous defense of freedom of the press against the
repressive elements of her own party deserves our appreciation.

I support France’s military action in Mali. But the media’s reaction
to it – when contrasted with coverage of Israel’s military actions in
Gaza – reveals flagrant double standards. More on that after my reasons
for supporting France’s Mali operation.

Islamists – like those who overran Mali last March – reverse human
progress and bring misery to those they subjugate: women, religious
minorities, moderate Muslims, secularists, gays, and anyone else who
doesn’t accept their primitive worldview. Islamists vitiate Islam,
twisting its meaning and practice to advance their real aim: brute
power. To that end, they break whatever Islamic and non-Islamic laws
they please, engaging in drug smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking,
victimizing perceived opponents, and murdering innocents.

They viciously disregard life, property, and culture. Al-Queda
destroyed 3,000 American souls and the Twin Towers on 9/11. The
Taliban pour acid on the faces of girls seeking an education. Ansar
Dine, the Islamists in Mali, last summer ruined much of Timbuktu’s
archeological treasures after deeming them “idolatrous.” They also
imposed sharia “law,” flogging music listeners and women caught showing
their hair, amputating hands of accused thieves, and stoning to death
fornicators.

Islamists conquer and rule by terror, not virtue. They destroy ruthlessly but build nothing.So any force with the moral clarity and courage to oppose such evil
deserves plaudits. In the case of Mali, that force is the French.

Fortunately, these judgments are obvious to the world press. Maybe
that explains the scant reports of civilian casualties and absent images
of bloody devastation produced by French airstrikes in Operation
Serval. The alternative explanation – that there are no civilian
casualties for the media to report because French military intelligence
and technology are perfectly precise – seems farfetched.

Yet when it comes to Islamists in Gaza, suddenly all moral clarity
disappears in an avalanche of clichéd images and headlines ignoring the
most basic truths. France can launch military attacks about 2,000 miles
south of its border in response to an Islamist threat that endangers
nobody in France, but Israel is vilified if it responds militarily to
deadly rocket attacks targeting its civilians from two miles to its
south.

Like their Islamist brethren in Afghanistan and Africa, the Hamas
rulers of Gaza have no program for the future other than expanding their
barbaric domain by force — first to the West Bank (which Islamists
don’t yet control) and eventually to Israel. Consider how Hamas came to
rule Gaza in 2007 (by a bloody putsch against Fatah), and what it has
done with its power since then (repress Gazans and attack Israel).

Hamas apologists blame Israel for Gaza’s woes, even though Egypt
controls Gaza’s southern border, and Israel, which completely left Gaza
in 2005, would much rather be developing trade with Gaza than defense
systems to intercept thousands of unprovoked rocket attacks from there.
But Hamas’ charter seeks Israel’s destruction, so how can Hamas lead its
people or neighborhood towards anything positive?

Incidentally, Palestinian extremists have as little respect for
non-Muslim holy sites as the Taliban had for the Bamiyan Buddhas: in
2002, they used the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for military
cover despite the obvious risk this posed to the Christian site. Last
week (and in 2000), Palestinians desecrated Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus –
hateful vandalism overlooked by every major news organization. Again,
the double standard.

From the attention and sympathy that the Palestinian cause attracts,
one would think that millions have died, and that they must be paragons
of innocent victimhood. Neither is true. The entire Arab-Israeli
conflict – from the 1920 Arab riots until today, including all regional
wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, etc.) – has killed roughly 25,000
Jews and 95,000 Arabs. The maximum number of Palestinian Arabs killed
during almost a century of conflict is probably about 20,000. Today’s
Syrian regime kills that many people in under a year. But a Google
search for “Palestine genocide” today produces about 10.7 million
results while the term “Syria genocide” produces just 9.5 million
results.

Such disproportionate attention and sympathy is unfair to the victims
of far deadlier conflicts and effectively whitewashes terrorism. But
Palestinians are far from Tibetans in their preferred tactics: they have
employed violent terrorism for decades.

So why is Palestinian victimhood prioritized? And if Hamas is similar to Ansar Dine, why does it get a pass?

Some might argue that — unlike Ansar Dine — Hamas represents its
subjects. But Hamas represents only the power of its guns and its
Iranian patron. Another argument: Mali’s government and people wanted
French help in ousting the Islamists. But Hamas would never seek
assistance in dethroning itself and who knows what Gazans want when
they’re brutalized for speaking against Hamas?

Unfortunately, the media’s double standard has a simple explanation:
anti-Israel bias. Just ask the non-profits established to address the
problem: CAMERA.org, HonestReporting.com, and BBCWatch.org.

Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, a military thriller about the Iranian nuclear threat. The novel also briefly explores the issue of media bias against Israel.

Source: http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/06/mali-reveals-the-media%E2%80%99s-gaza-bias/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by Asharq Al-AwsatLondon, Asharq Al-Awsat—The first Iranian
presidential visit to Egypt for more than thirty years has been beset by
controversy with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being lectured by the
Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh and then attacked outside a mosque by a man
wielding a shoe.

Video released by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency on
Tuesday showed a man throwing a shoe at the Iranian president as he left
Cairo’s al-Hussein mosque following evening prayers. The footage shows a
man, believed to be a Syrian national due to his accent, striking out
several times and Ahmadinejad immediately being surrounded by
body-guards. The attacker reportedly denounced Ahmadinejad as a “coward”
and was arrested following the incident.

Egyptian President
Mohamed Mursi received the Iranian President at Cairo Airport on
Tuesday. He is in town to attend a summit of the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC). Egyptian officials revealed that Mursi and
Ahmadinejad discussed ways to end the bloodshed in Syria and strengthen
bilateral relations.

Following this, Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed
al-Tayeb met with the Iranian president during which time he warned
Ahmadinejad not to meddle in Gulf Arab affairs. He denounced the “spread
of Shi’ism in Sunni lands” adding that Tehran must “respect Bahrain as a
sisterly Arab state”, according to a statement by al-Azhar’s media
office. Egypt’s top Sunni cleric also called on Tehran to guarantee full
rights to Iran’s Sunni community

Egypt’s Al-Daw'a al-Salafiyyah
(The Salafist Call) welcomed Al-Azhar’s call for an end to the
oppression being exercised against Iran’s Sunni minority. Party
spokesman Abdul Moneim El-Shahat stressed that al-Azhar, as one of the
top religious institutes in Egypt, has every right to issue such
statements, even if they are not accepted by the other side.

Iranian
official and semi-official news agencies did not report any of the
criticisms made by the al-Azhar Grand Sheikh towards Ahmadinejad and
Iran.

Iran's official Irna news agency quoted Dr. al-Tayeb as
saying, “We respect you (Ahmadinejad) as a person who is trying to
create unity among Muslims” adding “we hope your idea of creating unity
among Muslims can be materialized.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister
Mohamed Kamel Amr emphasized that Cairo will not seek to improve its
ties with Iran at the expense of Arab Gulf security.

Speaking on Tuesday, the Egyptian FM said, “The security of Gulf countries is a red line for Egypt.”

Regarding
the prospect of Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement, he said, “Egypt has a
clear cut stance on this issue. This stance has been repeatedly declared
by the president and the foreign ministry.”

This is the first time that an Iranian President has visited Egypt since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Diplomatic
ties between Cairo and Tehran broke down in 1980 after Egypt signed a
peace treaty with Israel and gave asylum to Iran’s exiled Shah Reza
Pahlavi. In 1981, Iran named a Tehran street after Khaled Islambouli,
assassin of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

However relations
between the two regional powers improved after the Egyptians elected an
Islamist president in June. Despite this, Cairo and Tehran remain at
odds over a number of issues, particularly the Syrian crisis.

Speaking
before leaving Tehran for Cairo, Iran state news agency Irna quoted
Ahmadinejad as saying, “I will try to pave the ground for developing
co-operation between Iran and Egypt.”

He added, “If Tehran and Cairo see more eye-to-eye on regional and international issues, many (issues) will change.”

It is not yet clear to what degree this has been achieved by Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Egypt.

by Jonathan S. TobinToday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg became the latest to weigh in
on the issue of allowing college campuses to be used as venues for
promotion of the BDS campaign against Israel. Bloomberg, who touts
himself as one of the greatest supporters of Israel in New York, claimed
that those who condemned the decision of the political science
department at the city’s Brooklyn College were, in effect, enemies of
free speech. According to the New York Observer, Bloomberg said the following:

“I couldn’t disagree more violently with BDS,” Mr. Bloomberg
explained. “As you know, I’m a big supporter of Israel–as big of a one
as I think you can find in the city. But I could also not agree more
strongly with an academic department’s right to sponsor a forum on any
topic that they choose. If you want to go to a university where the
government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I
suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”

But contrary to the mayor’s typically highhanded formulation, this is
not a free speech issue. Using a public university to promote hate
speech in which the one Jewish state in the world is hypocritically
singled out for isolation and destruction is not a matter of tolerating a
diversity of views. What is so frustrating about the debate about BDS
is the willingness of even those who do not support it to treat as a
merely one among many defensible views about the Middle East or, as the New York Times referred to it in an editorial on the subject yesterday, a question of academic freedom whose advocates do not deserve to be spoken of harshly. As I wrote last week
about a related controversy at Harvard, the BDS movement is not
motivated by disagreement with specific Israeli policies or the issue of
West Bank settlements. It is an economic war waged to destroy the
Jewish state and is morally indistinguishable from more traditional
forms of anti-Semitism that do not disguise themselves in the fancy
dress of academic discourse.

As Yair Rosenberg noted today in Tablet,
the BDS movement has as its declared goal Israel’s destruction via
implementation of the Palestinian “right of return.” This is consistent
with their overall rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a separate
Jewish state and their opposition to any means of self-defense against
Palestinian terrorism.

It needs to be understood that those who take such a position are, in
effect, denying the Jewish people the same right of self-determination
that they support for every other nation on the planet. That is a
textbook definition of bias and such bias when used against Jews is
called anti-Semitism. That is why the various members of the City
Council and New York State legislature who have spoken out on this issue
are right to try to exert pressure on Brooklyn College to cancel the
event and the Times and Bloomberg are wrong to defend the decision to uphold it.

Were Brooklyn College or any other state institution to hold a
conference whose purpose was to oppose integration or the rights of
African-Americans with academics who support the agenda of the Ku Klux
Klan, there would be no question that this would be considered beyond
the pale rather than free speech that deserved defense. The same
standard should apply to those who wish to destroy Israel by waging
economic warfare on it and its citizens.

Mayor Bloomberg is also wrong that opponents of BDS do their cause a
disservice when they attack those who wish to appropriate college
campuses for this cause. Rather than treat the BDS movement as an
unfortunate but tolerable eruption of anti-Israel agitation or mere
dissent about the settlements, it must be labeled for what it is: a
hateful movement based in prejudice whose agenda serves the cause of
those who wage violent war against the Jewish people. BDS advocates
crave the legitimacy that events such as the Brooklyn College event
affords them since it allows them to emerge from the fever swamps of the
far left where they normally reside.

One may debate Israel’s policies or those of any nation (though it is
fair to note that BDS supporters are uninterested in human rights
except as that phrase can be manipulated to bolster their war on
Israel), but a movement based in denying Jewish rights is anti-Semitism
no matter how high-minded its supporters and its useful idiot enablers
pretend it to be. Those who cannot draw a line between BDS and
legitimate debate are defending hate speech, not free speech.

There
are never any surprises in the reports and declarations of United
Nations organizations concerning the State of Israel. The most recent
example of the UN's inherent bias is the report made public on January
31, 2013 of the six-month long inquiry into Israeli settlements by a
panel of three jurists authorized by the United Nations Human Rights
Council (UNHRC).

One
must ask why the UN is wasting its time with a study and report on
Israeli settlements when it is urgent for international organizations to
be seeking to resolve the civil war in Syria. While the Israeli
settlements are a genuine subject of controversy, in spite of criticisms
by Palestinians and their associates in the UN, they have not claimed
the lives of any Palestinians. The civil war in Syria, in contrast, has
cost the lives of more than 60,000 people over the past two years, and
resulted in the displacement and flight of hundreds of thousands of
refugees from their homes. Yet the international community, and
specifically the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly,
has done little to condemn the continuing slaughter and violations of
human rights by the regime headed by Bashar Assad and even less to take
measures to end them.

Instead,
an international group has once again spent time inquiring into and
condemning the State of Israel. To the surprise of none except the most
naïve, the report of the inquiry issued in January 2013, whose
conclusions were predictable before it started the inquiry, enjoined
Israel to stop expanding settlements and called on the Israeli
government to withdraw all Israeli settlers from the disputed areas of
the West Bank.

The
panel took the position that private companies should stop working in
the settlements if their activities adversely affect the human rights of
Palestinians. It urged countries that are home to these business
companies to ascertain that human rights are respected throughout their
operation in the settlements.

The
report held that the settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention
which forbids the transfer of population into occupied territory. Action
of this kind can be regarded as war crimes which are subject to
prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC) according to
Article 8 of the ICC statute. The report, giving unsolicited advice,
stated that if the Palestinians, having been admitted to the UN as a
non-member observer state, now ratify the Rome Statute which established
the ICC, they can bring charges against Israel "for gross violations of
human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian
law" to the ICC.

In
particular, the report held, the settlements were "leading to a
creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and
viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian
people to self-determination."

About
250 settlements in the West Bank, in which 520,000 Israelis reside,
have been established since 1967. That population is increasing much
faster than the population of Israel outside the settlements.

It
was surprising that the panel took six months to present their
findings. The result was implicit in the mission given to the panel by
the UNHRC in March 2012 "to investigate the implications of the Israeli
settlements on the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural
rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, including East Jerusalem." The terms of this one-sided
statement did not mention the continuing terrorist attacks by
Palestinians from Gaza and elsewhere against citizens of Israel.

The
outcome of the report was thus totally predictable, partly because it
was a product of the UN Human Rights Council whose whole history has
been one of hostility to the State of Israel and also because of the
composition of the panel. It consisted of three women jurists: Christine
Chanet, a French human rights lawyer as the chair, Asma Jahangir,
advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and Unity Dow, formerly a
judge of the High Court of Botswana.

Chanet's
position was clear before the inquiry began. She is reported to have
commented in July 2012 on the benefits that Israeli settlers obtained to
the detriment of Palestinians. Chanet must be one of the few people in
the world to have made the striking comment that "it was very difficult
to have a real dialog with Israel." She appeared to be unaware of the
intense and sometimes vituperative dialog displayed in Israeli political
and social affairs, manifested most recently by the 32 political
parties competing in the Israeli parliamentary election in January 2013.

Understandably, the members of the mission could not visit Israel or the disputed territories.

The
UN Human Rights Council is one of most ludicrous bodies in the world.
In recent years its 47 members have included such peace-loving countries
anxious to uphold human rights as Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan,
Nicaragua, China, and Burma. These countries have ensured that nearly
half of the UNHRC resolutions regarding specific countries are directed
against Israel, thus making the organization the most continually biased
international body against Israel. As a result of this bias its whole
agenda is a distraction from the fundamental issue in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the continuing reluctance and
unwillingness of Palestinians to enter into peace negotiations with
Israel.

The
January 2013 report is unhelpful for three reasons. First, as a
minimum, it indirectly encourages international boycotts of products
made in the settlements. Secondly, though supposedly a judicial body, it
has entered the political arena. It strongly asserts a contentious
unqualified political position: that the Israeli settlements represent
occupation, rather than arguing that the fate of the settlements and the
disputed territories has to be determined by negotiations. The UNHRC
and the three-member panel inquiry paid no heed to the fact that Israel
voluntarily withdrew 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank in
2005.

Thirdly,
the very language of the report in speaking of the "magnitude of
violations" by Israel, and of Israeli actions which are detrimental to
the rights of Palestinians is in accordance with the thrust of the
statements about Israel made for some years by the UNHRC. The repetition
of this language at this time is particularly unhelpful in being
confrontational, heating the political atmosphere, and thus hindering
the possibility of peace negotiations.

Regrettably,
the report has been issued and it is too late for the three-member
panel to consider a more realistic appraisal of human rights violations.
When even Mia Farrow, the film star and activist, can recognize and
protest the absurdities of the UN as she did on January 29, 2013 in
condemning the election of Sudan to become vice-president of the United
Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSC), we ought to expect more
rational behavior on the part of UN bodies. Mia Farrow correctly found
the election of a country, well known for its cruelty to women, to a
body supposedly concerned among other issues with women's rights and the
elimination of female genital mutilation to be "incomprehensible and
unacceptable." Indeed, it is unusually incomprehensible and indeed
ludicrous since the president of Sudan, Al Bashir, is wanted for
genocide in the Darfur region of the country in which more than 700,000
civilians face starvation.

Can
one expect support by human rights activists and declarations by the
United Nations Human Rights Council for the position on this issue
expressed by Mia Farrow or are they too concerned with the alleged
iniquities of Israel to consider the issue?

I was asked to Brussels to
address the matter of what the European Union might do to tackle
anti-Semitism. The answer is easy: "Stop funding anti-Semites."

And so it was that I found myself once again in a meeting in the
twilight world of Brussels -- an ugly city filled with ugly buildings,
ugly overpriced food and overpaid officials. The objective of any visit
must always be a hit-an-run: to get in and get out as swiftly as
possible, The only reason to go is to try and inject some sense into a
city so starved of it. When, therefore, asked to address the matter of
what the European Union might do to tackle anti-Semitism, the answer is
easy: "Stop funding anti-Semites." What is hard is that this is
Brussels, where words are meaningless and nothing makes any sense. Here
is just one example:

The Palestinian Ma'an News Agency is one of the most supremely
anti-Semitic organs in the Middle East. Which I hope readers realize is
putting it in the premier league of anti-Semitic slander.

Here is an excerpt from a recent article on the Ma'an website by one Saswan Najib Abd Al-Halim:

Jews think that their fortresses will protect them from
death, but any breach of these fortresses or protective walls instills
panic and fear in their hearts, and they are seized by fear and
trembling. If a missile falls beyond their protective walls or if even a
bullet passes over them, you can see how their hearts fill with horror
-- and this is because Allah has stricken fear in their hearts and
decreed humiliation and degradation upon them until Judgment Day...

Historically, it is known that the lives of Jews have always been war
and fighting. The only reason for this is that they have been outcasts
in every corner of the earth, and not one nation in the world respects
them, for they cause strife, and scheme everywhere they settle. We know
that they have been defeated in every war they have fought throughout
history, and they have been dispersed in every direction, but Allah's
curse upon them and his fury at them cause them to continue with their
transgression and tyranny.

It is possible that there are people willing to concede that the Ma'an News Agency has the right to run this sort of libelous venom. But now we come to the real question: Why on earth should we pay for it?

The Ma'an News Agency is not able to run this type of libel
unaided. It does not run it because it manages to gather enough
subscribers and enough advertising "clicks" from cosmetic companies. It
runs because we actually pay for part of it. I wish the jaw were still
able to drop at this. As I have said for years – it is not surprising
when you find people who hate you. What is surprising is when you pay people to hate you.

The Ma'an News Agency has been funded by a range of
international bodies. These include – astoundingly – the British
government. Also the Danish and Dutch governments. And of course it also
receives funding from the EU. When Mr Al-Halim and friends pour out
their anti-Semitic hate speech – calling Jews "the root of conflict in
the world," "cursed by Allah" and "outcasts in every corner of the
earth," it is we who are paying part of his cheque. When Ma'an
propagates the idea that "Allah has decreed" that Jews are destined to
be "humiliated," it is we who are acting in the role of publisher.

As Palestinian Media Watch has previously revealed, Ma'an News Agency, part of the Ma'an Network, was launched thanks to funding from the Danish Representative Office to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Other donors with whom Ma'an
partners are the European Commission, UNESCO, and UKaid. And just in
case you thought these peaceable-sounding bodies could not possibly
realize what they are doing, or that Ma'an's fraudulent language
must somehow be hidden from them, you just have to remind yourself of
how in-plain-sight all of this is. The latest Ma'an atrocity finishes with the words of the Fatah slogan -- not Hamas, Fatah -- "Revolution Until Victory."

"Revolution Until Victory?" Surely not. As the British, Dutch and
Danish governments might say: Surely you mean: "Can't we all work
towards a two-state solution where Palestinian and Jewish states can
live side by side?" No, I'm afraid not. "Revolution Until Victory":
There it is. There it always is. I fear that even if Brussels hosts a
thousand more seminars on tackling anti-Semitism, absolutely nothing
will be done about it. And we remain so blind, so stupid, so vicious or
so wicked that we will actually pay for this malevolence. And so we will
-- in more senses than one.

Indonesia, once a country of diversity, is now becoming a place for one-way Islam.

Although Indonesia, "the world's largest Muslim country" with an 87%
Muslim population, was once considered a moderate Muslim country, day by
day it has been leaning more and more towards conservative Islam and
Sharia laws. Initiated in 2009, bylaws in the light of Sharia rulings
were implemented that conflict with the values of human rights, and are
creating a difficult land for minorities to live in.

Indonesian Aceh province authorities recently launched an initiative, despite opposition from human rights activists, to ban women from straddling motorcycles
when riding behind a man. Suaidi Yahia, mayor of Lhokseumawe, the
second large city of the province, said to the Associated Press, "It is
improper for women to sit astride. We implement Islamic law here." He
later said, "women sitting on motorbikes must not sit astride: it will
provoke the male drivers." Instead, they allow women to sit sidesaddle,
which is dangerous on a motorcycle.

The objectives of the local authorities were apparently to prevent
"showing a woman's curves;" it is against Islamic teachings, Yahia went
on to say, unless it is an emergency. In a notice distributed to the
government offices and villages of northern Aceh, they added that women
are not allowed to hold onto the driver.

Last year, the mayor of Tasikmalaya in West Java proposed to veil all
women, including non-Muslims. Mayor Syarif Hidayat vowed to implement
Sharia law, to repay Muslim leaders who backed his election victory. The
President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is serving his
second term, also relies on the support of Muslim political parties.

Sharia law is spreading throughout all of the provinces of Indonesia;
citizens are enacting their own variations of Islamic laws, and
applying then to non-Muslims as well.

Although Western leaders have praised Indonesia as a model of "Muslim
democracy," as Muslims become more intolerant of its Christian
minority, the increased Islamization of Indonesia renders these
Christians more vulnerable. A few days ago, six Catholic schools in East
Java finally gave in to a local ordinance that requires all Muslim
students to be able to read and write Koranic verses, and said it will
provide Islamic lessons for their Muslim students.

The head of the Ministry Office of Religious Affairs, Imam Mukhlis, told the Jakarta Post
that the six schools had finally agreed to provide Islamic teachers for
their Muslim students. Earlier the Blitar City Administration of East
Java threatened to close down the six Catholic schools for their refusal
to provide Islamic lessons to their Muslim students. In 2006, President
Susilo tightened criteria for building a house of worship. More than
400 churches have been closed since he took office in 2004. The
notorious Bali terrorist attack, as well as restrictions on hotels,
bars, embassies, have all derived from these decade-long efforts of
Islamization. By 2010, Indonesia had over 150 religiously motivated
regulations restricting minorities' rights.

It is not only governmental initiatives that are disrupting the lives
of Christians, Shiite Muslims, Bahais, Ahmadiyyans, Sufis and atheists.
Individuals and groups have been engaging in terroristic attacks
against non-Sunni Muslims. In August 2011, Muslim militants burned down
three Christian churches on Sumatra. In an attack, in west Java in
February 2011, three Ahmadiyyans were killed. A cameraman recorded the
scene, posted on YouTube.
In September 2010, Islamist militants burned down two churches, and
stabbed an elderly Christian as he tried to defend the third site.

Western leaders need to understand that Indonesia, under its current
government, can no longer be labeled a Muslim country that is risk-free
for religious minorities. Even though, after exceptional international
pressure, Indonesia's government cracked down on an the Al Qaeda
affiliated group Jemaah Islamiyah, it has not yet even tried to
apprehend other Islamist militants committing crimes against religious
minorities. Indonesia, once a country of diversity, is now becoming a
place for one-way Islam.

I’ve pointed out months ago my view of the “Ground Zero” mosque
controversy that I thought it was more of a con job than an Islamist
offensive. The developer and the imam seemed to be shady people who were
trying to promote their careers and seemed to believe they were going
to collect a lot of Saudi money.

photo by david shankbone

I also predicted that the mosque/community center tower would never be built. Now, one of the project’s backers has launched a law suit full
of detailed allegations, including a claim that the imam spent $3
million of the money raised on a good time for himself. I don’t know if
these claims are true but presumably a lot more will come out in the law
suit about the story behind this controversial project.

Ironically, the mosque/community center project generated too much
publicity, after being rushed through a city council willing to do
anything to prove it wasn’t Islamophobic, including observe the city’s
own regulations and procedures. This brought criticism and public
attention.In other words, this wasn’t really an issue of religious
freedom versus bigotry or a choice between “Islamophobia” and jihad but a
cautionary lesson about how the fear of seeming to be a “racist” or
“Islamophobe” can be manipulated to fool people into forgetting law and
logic.

If the whole issue would have been kept quiet, the likely outcome
wouldn’t have been jihad next to the World Trade Center ruins but the
enrichment of those involved. At any rate, let’s see what evidence is
provided in the court case.

Published on PJ Media.Barry RubinSource: http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/02/ground-zero-mosque/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Both outgoing US secretary of defense and military chief Dempsey testify before Senate C'tee that they supported Clinton plan to arm rebels; Syrian jets bombard Damascus in effort to halt rebel advance, 46 dead.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta [file]

Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing

The Obama administration’s two top defense officials publicly acknowledged a policy disagreement with the White House over whether to send US arms to the rebels in Syria.

In congressional testimony on Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who is retiring, and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both said they supported a plan last year by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus to provide weapons to the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Their comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee came in response to a question from Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been a leading critic of the Obama administration for failing to do more to help the Syrian rebels who are heavily outgunned by Assad’s forces.

Their response to McCain’s question about whether they supported the Clinton-Petraeus plan was direct and terse.

“We do,” said Panetta. “We did,” said Dempsey.

That means the White House was presented with unified support for sending arms by the top members of Obama’s national security team outside the White House staff.

Asked about disagreement over whether to arm the rebels, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing today that she won’t comment on “internal policy discussions.”Administration officials, such as Nuland, have said that the US assistance to the Syrians is limited to humanitarian aid and non-lethal equipment for the rebels, while some other nations may be providing weapons.

Warplanes fired rockets at southern parts of the route where rebels have spent the past 36 hours overrunning army positions and road blocks encircling the heart of the city, the site of key state security and intelligence installations.

Assad, battling to crush a 22-month-old revolt in which 60,000 people have died, has lost control of large parts of the country but his forces, backed by air power, have so far kept rebels away from the center of Damascus.

World powers fear the conflict - the longest and deadliest of the uprisings that started spreading through the Arab world two years ago - could envelop Syria's neighbors, further destabilizing an already explosive region.

"The regime really wants its positions on the ring road back. It is a major defense line for the capital," Aby Ghazi, a rebel commander based in the eastern suburb of Irbreen told Reuters.

Ghazi said the rebels have reached the edges of the city's main Abbaside Square where the Syrian military had turned a football stadium into barracks.

Units of Assad's elite Republican Guard based on the imposing Qasioun Mountain overlooking the capital fired artillery rounds and rockets at Jobar, an eastern neighborhood bordering the square, and at the ring road, rebel and activist sources said.

Damascus residents, long accustomed to the sounds of war, said Thursday's shelling was some of the heaviest they had heard.

"They've gone insane. All of them. They're insane," one central Damascus resident said by telephone.

Activists said 46 people had died on Thursday, mostly from heavy army bombardment on the contested neighborhoods of Jobar and Zamalka which are near compounds housing Alawite forces.

One rebel commander told Reuters the insurgents were not trying to take the capital with the current push.

"The objective is to take out the sniper positions and fortifications that form part of the regime's defense line on Damascus, not to advance too quickly without having the proper support," said Captain Islam Alloush of the Liwa al-Islam rebel unit.

Another opposition activist in Damascus said the offensive was being led by Sunni officers who had defected from the army and wanted to cut Assad's command and control lines from the center of the city to its outskirts.

The rebels are using anti-aircraft guns, mortar rounds and armored vehicles captured from Assad's forces over the past few months, according to opposition sources.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

On
Saturday, the Obama administration’s efforts to maintain the fantasy
that diplomatic efforts will get Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear
weapons was again on display for all the world to see, courtesy of Vice
President Joe Biden. During a speech at the Munich Security Conference,
Biden contended that
the United States “would be prepared to meet bilaterally with the
Iranian leadership.” ”There has to be an agenda that they are prepared
to speak to,” Biden added. “We are not just prepared to do it for the
exercise.” The Iranians, meanwhile, are hailing
the new approach the Obama administration is taking with Tehran and are
no doubt looking forward to the extra time it will afford them to
continue on the trajectory of their nuclear weapons program.

One is forced to ponder what outcome Biden could possibly be
envisioning that would rise above the level of a futile “exercise,”
given Tehran’s continual intransigence and the Obama administration’s
indulgence of the regime’s games. The latest failure to move the needle
occurred as recently as January, when nuclear inspectors from the UN’s
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were denied access to the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran. Parchin is where it has long been suspected that the Iranians are working on
a nuclear trigger for a bomb. IAEA deputy inspector Herman Nackaerts
expressed his frustration at the time: “We had two days of intensive
discussions. Differences remain so we could not finalize the structured
approach to resolve the outstanding issues regarding possible military
dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program,” he said at the time. The two side
are scheduled to meet again on February 12.

So what has changed? Nothing on the part of the Iranians. Yet Biden
insisted that Iran still had time to change course and resolve the issue
through diplomacy. ”The ball is in the government of Iran’s court,”
said Biden. “It is well past time for Iran to adopt a serious good-faith
approach to negotiations. Abandon the illicit nuclear program and your
support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Watered-down sanctions and poor oversight are already incentive
enough for Iran to stay the course. For instance, Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko revealed that
an audit of U.S. defense spending in Afghanistan shows that the
Pentagon may have spent a “significant amount” of money for fuel
purchased from Iran, due to a “lack of oversight” on the billions of
dollars of taxpayer funds used to support the Afghan military. ”The fact
that the United States has paid for the acquisition and delivery of
imported fuel for the Afghan National Security Forces — nearly $1.1
billion for the Afghan National Army alone between fiscal years 2007 and
2012 — raises concerns that U.S. funds could have been used to pay for
imports of fuel potentially in violation of U.S. economic sanctions
against Iran,” said Sopko.

No doubt this is due to a certain level of bureaucratic sloppiness
that is endemic to the kind of ever-expanding government this
administration champions. And while that may be somewhat understandable,
this administration’s ongoing diplomatic approach seems destined to do
little more than give Tehran the time it needs to finally cross the
nuclear weapon threshold.

Thus it was completely unsurprising that Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was pleased with
Biden’s offer. ”As I have said yesterday, I am optimistic, I feel this
new administration is really this time seeking to at least divert from
its previous traditional approach vis-a-vis my country,” Salehi told the
German Council on Foreign Relations. Salehi, who also attended the
Munich conference, went further. “I think it is about time both sides
really get into engagement because confrontation certainly is not the
way,” he added.

Such a statement is a typical rewriting of history. Negotiations
between some combination of the P5+1 countries (United States, Russia,
China, Britain, France and Germany) and Iran have been ongoing for a decade.
In all that time, not a single proposal has gained acceptance from all
the parities involved. Such orchestrated futility is the essence of what
a diplomatic approach has produced. Yet once again the P5+1 is offering
Iran another chance to engage in negotiations on February 24, possibly
in Kazakhstan. While Salehi called this “good news,” the Iranians have
yet to accept. Even if they do, Salehi has offered a hint as to where
they are likely to go. ”And another thing: this issue of the nuclear
file is becoming boring,” he said during the same interview.

In London, Hossein Mousavian, one of Iran’s former nuclear
negotiators, also hinted at the likely futility another round of
multilateral negotiations would produce, claiming that they are
meaningless without “parallel dialogue” between the Obama administration
and Iran. “I believe they should start immediately. They should put all
issues on the table. They should start with issues of common interest
like Afghanistan in order to create a positive momentum,” he said.

Senator John McCain, who also spoke in Munich, proved once again that
willful blindness with regard to Iran is a bipartisan problem. He
favors direct talks with Tehran as well, even as he cautioned that
optimism may be unwarranted. ”I think we should learn the lessons of
history and that is that no matter what the talks are, if you still have
the fundamental problem–and the fundamental problem is Iranians’
commitment to acquisition of a nuclear weapon–it doesn’t matter to a
significant degree,” he said. ”We’ve seen this movie before. And
obviously, I think any venue we would support, but to have grounds for
optimism I think would be a mistake.”

After more than ten years of fruitless negotiations, one might be
forgiven for wondering when anyone involved in this ongoing fiasco will
“learn the lessons of history.”

That would be anyone on the Western side of the equation. Iran is
learning that the Obama administration is seemingly determined to find
some sort of accommodation with the fanatical mullahs , and nothing says
this better than the president’s attempt, and likely success, in
getting Chuck Hagel appointed Secretary of Defense. In 2007, Hagel voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. In 2008 Hagel, like Biden, also favored direct
negotiations with Iran, despite noting that “they support terrorists,
they support Hezbollah. They’ve got their tentacles wrapped around every
problem in the middle East. They’re anti-Israel, anti-United States.
Those are realities. Those are facts.” In his Senate hearing last week,
Hagel “explained” his reasoning in a jaw dropping moment when he noted
that the U.S. had never “designated a part of a legitimate government
[Iran]” as a terrorist organization. Realizing his mistake he corrected
himself. Iran’s government is “recognizable,” he said.

So is Hagel’s cluelessness. It is all the more amplified by another gaffe during
which he said he supported the Obama’s administration policy of
“containment” with regard to Iran, even though the administration has
repeatedly ruled that out as an option. In fact, Iran would probably
like nothing more than to be at the stage of “containment” after
securing a nuclear weapon.

So what policy should the United States be pursuing with regard to
Iran? Writing for PJ Media, Middle East expert Andrew McCarthy explains that
focusing solely on nukes is “delusional.” “Exportation of their
Islamist revolution, hatred of America and, within that sweep, the
destruction of Israel have been the operating premises of Khomeinist
Iran since 1979,” he writes. “The facilitation of terrorism–a barbaric
way to pursue national interests–has been the regime’s principal means
of operation. The mullahs have killed or aided and abetted in the
killing of thousands of Americans, and every day they try to kill more.
The regime is an incorrigible enemy of the United States. There should
be nothing they can do at this point, after over 30 years of this, to
convince us otherwise.”

Apparently the Obama administration remains unconvinced. Though ten
years of pursuing diplomacy have produced no tangle results, this
administration still believes it is capable of getting an apocalyptic
regime to alter its divine objective: hastening the second coming of the
Twelfth or Hidden Imam whose re-emergence must be preceded by a period
of chaos. And as the U.S. continues down the road of appeasement, expect
fanatical Iran to respond accordingly.